Ryan Lessard

Contributor

Before becoming a reporter for NHPR, Ryan devoted many months interning with The Exchange team, helping to produce their daily talk show. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire in Manchester with a major in Politics and Society and a minor in Communication Arts. While in school, he also interned for a DC-based think tank. His interests include science fiction and international relations. Ryan is a life-long Manchester resident.

The New Hampshire Liquor Commission reports liquor sales reached a record six hundred twenty six million dollars in the past fiscal year.

Joseph Mollica, the Chairman of the liquor commission, credits the 4% increase in sales to customer service training and innovative marketing campaigns.

“What this current commission is doing is utilizing the ability of current marketing, social media and proper advertising and these renovations of these stores. And I think what we will see is the liquor commission become more and more profitable as time goes on.”

UNH Manchester is planning on selling its main building in the millyard to the company run by the inventor of the Segway. The university is looking to expand into a larger space—the millyard’s Pandora building.

For more than twenty years, UNH Manchester has been located at 400 Commercial street, next door to Dean Kamen’s company DEKA’s headquarters. Now, the school wants to consolidate itself in a nearby larger mill building where it already leases the first two floors from Kamen. The swap would mean Kamen can expand his corporate headquarters.

For the first time, New Hampshire’s Hindu community hosted a week-long religious festival in Concord called the Srimad Bhagavata Maha Purana (or just Purana for short). It’s a ceremony where participants gather from across the region to pray for global peace, emotional wellbeing and spiritual enlightenment.

Manchester police say that while efforts to reduce property crimes in Manchester have shown some success, the total number of crimes since January is virtually identical to last year. The information was presented during a downtown community meeting hosted by the Manchester police department Tuesday night.

Officer Matt Barter, the department’s crime analyst, says some of the numbers between January and June are looking good.

Saturday marked the beginning of the annual intertribal powwow in Warner.

On the field next to the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum, craft vendor tents, participants and visiting families surround a wide meeting circle at the field’s center. Lynn Clark is the Executive Director of the museum.

“It’s our 15th anniversary powwow. It’s one of the larger powwows in New Hampshire and it’s a very family oriented event and it’s a great social event—as you hear everybody reconnecting. There’s people that I sometimes see just once a year at the pow wow. It’s great fun.”

The Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce is expanding its summer Lunch in the Park series this year. Veterans Park is at the center of an effort to clean up the image of downtown area parks.

The hope is that every Thursday to the end of the summer people will venture out of their offices and homes to eat lunch in the city’s Veterans Park. Last year, Lunch in the Park events happened three times. This time it’s up to eight. Mike Skelton, the chamber of commerce president, says the events were first conceived when business owners complained about how the parks were being used.

The Pelham Fire Chief is renewing his call for a ban on a type of controversial fireworks called reloadable mortars. That follows a second accident in his town over the holiday weekend.

Pelham Fire Chief James Midgley remembers seeing what he describes as a mushroom cloud coming from behind a residence where thirteen people were injured two years ago. Then, on July 4th this year, just around the corner, another fireworks accident injured two people. And the common thread, says Midgley, is reloadable mortars.

At the first public meeting since it was announced the New Hampshire Institute of Art was engaged in merger discussions with Southern New Hampshire University, faculty, staff and students voiced their concerns.

In the NHIA auditorium, filled with about fifty people, reactions to the prospect of a merger with SNHU ranged from cautiously optimistic to skeptical. Like faculty member Sean Beavers.

Backyard pyrotechnics are a favorite—and legal—way for Granite Staters to celebrate the 4th of July. And the fireworks lobby—yes, there really is a lobby for everything—has been fighting to not only keep them legal, but to deregulate them.

Two years ago this week in Pelham, a homeowner piled up nearly 350 mortar shells on his deck. And when sparks from a stray spinner landed on them, they exploded and more than a dozen people were injured. In 2011, the legislature had legalized those two types of fireworks.

The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services held a public info session in Manchester Tuesday night to demystify the state’s new Expanded Medicaid plan.

About 15 people, mostly care providers, attended the Manchester session. Questions ranged from how one qualifies for the program and ‘are refugees included?’ (they are), to the application process itself.

The BBC reported Saturday that the Sudanese woman sentenced to death for apostasy, Meriam Ibrahim, will be released in the coming days. The report was based on a statement made by a high-ranking Sudanese foreign minister who reportedly said Ibrahim would be released from prison in a few days’ time. I caught up with the Ibrahim’s brother-in-law Gabriel Wani of Manchester.

Sitting in his living room, Gabriel Wani anxiously phones his brother Daniel, Ibrahim’s husband, to see if she will be released.

Republican candidate for Governor, Walt Havenstein, toured the factory floor of an aluminum casting company Wednesday. The visit marks the start of a series of similar tours as part of his Republican primary campaign.

Members of law enforcement from across the state gathered in Concord Monday to observe the New Hampshire Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial Ceremony. The name of Officer Steve Arkell, who was killed a week ago, was on everyone’s minds, but he will be formally added to the memorial next year.

During a vigil for fallen Brentwood police Officer Steve Arkell was held Tuesday night, hundreds of Brentwood residents and members of surrounding towns gathered, candles in hand, to mourn and celebrate the life of a man who served the community he grew up in.

The week started with the news of Southern New Hampshire University’s new $10,000 bachelor’s degree program. Recent undergraduate enrollment numbers show the small, Manchester school is now equal in size to UNH in Durham, with a vast majority of its students online.

At a recent cookout behind the red-brick mill building that houses UNH Manchester, senior Derek Burkhardt describes what’s been an eight-year run to get his bachelor’s.

“I actually attended UNH Manchester right out of high school,” says Burkhardt. “But I took some time off in between school to save up some money to be able to afford school, but also to join AmeriCorps. So once I was done with that I came back to continue my education.”

Like many students here Burkhardt says he chose UNH Manchester because that’s where he lives.

Some of the troubles plaguing higher education are hitting institutions a lot harder in New Hampshire. High public tuition? We have the highest. State aid to public universities? We have among the lowest. For many students, that means they're facing huge debts which will be difficult to repay. That reality is causing students and institutions to reevaluate.

About 80% of the people behind bars in New Hampshire have substance abuse issues. It’s a growing problem and one way the justice system is trying to address the problem is with drug courts—where nonviolent offenders have their sentences suspended if they take part in treatment. Five counties now operate drug courts and efforts are underway to start two more in Manchester and Nashua. The program could help reduce recidivism rates.